buckeye
Guest
|
 Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 10:08 pm Post subject: God's Wrath, and the Tories' |
 |
|
God's Wrath, and the Tories'
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2008/05/26/ToryWrath/
Harper's zeal for retribution seems religious.
By Murray Dobbin
Published: May 26, 2008
TheTyee.ca
With the country well into its third year of minority government under
Prime Minister Stephen Harper there has been very little commentary on what
may be the most important driver of his policies.
No other prime minister in our history has so strained the fundamental
edict of the separation of church and state.
Perhaps that's because the church in question is not the Catholic Church or
the Anglican Church -- the ones that used to come to mind in such
conflicts. No, this church is the evangelical Alliance Church (the same one
attended by Preston Manning) and the implications for public policy are far
more dramatic.
Few Canadians probably even realize that the prime minister who is steadily
changing the nature of their country is a born-again, evangelical
Christian. Unlike his fellow born-again, George Bush, Harper has been
careful to manage his blending of church and state. But if you have any
doubts, read Stephen Harper and the Theo-cons, the meticulously researched
2006 article by Marci McDonald in the Walrus Magazine.
Theocracy lite
There is lots of evidence to suggest that Harper has no problem creating a
theocracy lite in this country, partly based on his own religious
convictions and partly to ensure that he keeps his core constituency happy.
Some of Harper's policies -- from his aggressive support of Israel (taking
his lead from the Christian right in the U.S.), to legislation that would
take into account the death of a fetus in the murder of a pregnant woman
(encouraging his anti-abortion supporters) are pretty obvious.
But it is the extent to which retribution is at the core of this man that
strikes me as one the most disturbing aspect of his government, because it
is so at odds with the values of the vast majority of Canadians.
Whether its his war on drugs (and drug users), his obvious preference for
the death penalty, his refusal to register any complaint about the illegal
treatment of Omar Khadr in Guantanamo, his politicization of the procedure
for choosing judges or his appointment of Stockwell Day -- the man who
believes the Earth is just 6,000 years old -- as his minister of public
safety, Stephen Harper is making it clear that his god is not a forgiving
god. Forgiveness is for sissies.
Stockwell Day, the avenger
Stockwell Day was chosen carefully as minister of public safety. His
retribution credentials are impeccable. He has suggested that one way to
get around the lack of a death penalty in Canada might be to release
murderers into the general prison population so that "moral prisoners will
deal with it in a way which we don't have the nerve to do."
In 2004, when he was the Conservative Party's foreign affairs critic, Day
refused to issue any statement of condolence or sympathy to the Palestinian
people when Yasser Arafat died -- referring his befuddled colleagues to an
article by David Frum suggesting that Arafat had died of AIDS.
One of the most controversial issues that highlights the Tories' desire for
retribution is the government's determination to close Vancouver's safe
injection site for drug users.
The harm reduction project, called Insite, has been praised around the
world, positively assessed in 22 peer-reviewed papers and is supported by
the city, local police and the even B.C.'s right-wing Liberal government.
Health Canada recommended in 2006 that funding for the project be extended
and that similar programs be tried in other cities.
Faith over science
But for Harper and his party, their evangelical Christianity trumps
science. The International Journal of Drug Policy recently featured an
article charging that the Harper government directly interfered in the work
of independent scientific bodies, tried to muzzle scientists and
deliberately misrepresented research findings. All in the service of
ensuring that drug users retain their status as criminals to be punished.
Last September, Health Minister Tony Clement told the Canadian Medical
Association: "To me, prevention is harm reduction. Treatment is harm
reduction. Enforcement is harm reduction."
Dr. Keith Martin, a British Columbia Liberal MP and former Reform Party
star, is also a former substance-abuse physician. He admits that Clement
may succeed in closing Insite: "But in doing that they will be essentially
committing murder."
Other peoples' death penalties
It is no secret that the Harper government and its public safety minister
support the death penalty. But their preference has taken them to extremes
and revealed their contempt for democracy and the rule of law. Not content
with the current law, democratically arrived at, Harper and Day will do
anything they can to circumvent it, doing by stealth and administrative
fiat what they cannot do, yet, in Parliament.
In a stunning abuse of process, Day simply declared that they were no
longer going to follow the policy of seeking clemency for any Canadian
sentenced to death who has "... been tried in a democratic country that
supports the rule of law." The new position was applied in particular to
Ronald Allen Smith, a 50-year-old Albertan scheduled to be executed in
Montana. Smith was convicted in 1982 for the brutal murder of two young
men.
When it suits the government, however, it casually violates its own stated
principles and intervenes -- as it has done on the case of Mohamed Kohail,
23, a Canadian citizen sentenced to be beheaded in Saudi Arabia for the
death of a man in a school yard fight. In March the federal government
announced -- rightly, of course -- it would be seeking clemency for Kohail.
The rationale for the intervention was the patent lack of democracy in
Saudi Arabia. But it is difficult to resist the conclusion that on the
minds of these two crusaders was the political advantage of challenging a
Muslim state.
What principle was in operation for 18 months throughout which time the
government refused any action in the case of Brenda Martin, the Canadian
held in prison without trial on charges of money laundering? Retribution or
incompetence? It's hard to know but politics soon dictated that the policy
was again flexible. After her conviction, the government took the bizarre
action of flying her home in a private government jet at a cost to
taxpayers of $82,767. No price is too high to take political advantage --
the rule of law notwithstanding.
Judgment days
Retribution was front and centre early in the Harper government's term in
the new process for choosing federal judges. That was accomplished by two
fundamental changes to the independent provincial screening committees
advising the government. Harper added one more federal appointee to the
committees, giving the government a de facto majority but more importantly,
making that new appointee a police officer with the intent of ensuring the
judges appointed are tough on crime.
This so alarmed the Canadian Judicial Council that it issued a statement
declaring that: "This puts in peril the concept of an independent body that
advises the government on who is best qualified to be a judge."
There is much more evidence suggesting that retribution is a prime
motivator of this government. A Canadian citizen suspected of terrorist
affiliation, Abousofian Abdelrazik, has been in legal limbo for five years
in Sudan, courtesy of the Harper government's refusal to act.
Changes to the Young Offenders' Act to ensure that offenders are duly
punished has been a goal of Stockwell Day for years and the government
pursues the goal against all the scientific evidence and the admonishment
of the judiciary.
Harper has announced that the government will be cutting $26 million from
funding for community organizations that support people with HIV or AIDS.
His tax bill giving the government hands-on authority to prevent funding of
morally suspect films overtly punishes any filmmaker thinking of violating
Harper and his government's Christian mores.
The new crusades
Perhaps the most fundamental example is the explicit militarization of
Canadian political culture. Harper recently announced the commitment $40 to
$50 billion in additional spending for the military over the next twenty
years and this for a country with no identifiable enemies in that period --
other than vaguely defined "terrorists."
Retribution thus becomes one of Canada's principal exports as the Harper
regime eagerly awaits the next opportunity in the global crusade against
Islamic terrorism.
Conservatives govern this country by virtue of fewer than 25 per cent of
eligible voters. Yet this putative minority government status is treated
with complete contempt by Stephen Harper, in stark contrast with literally
every other minority government in Canadian history. The source of this
contempt, also aimed at the media, the civil service, political opponents
and the law itself, may not be simply the man's well-documented arrogance.
Evangelical Christianity has its own special disdain for democratic
governance.
When the Bentley (Alberta) Christian Centre was under Stockwell Day's
guidance (he was school administrator from 1978 to 1985), it featured a
social studies lesson that declared that democratic governments "represent
the ultimate deification of man, which is the very essence of humanism and
totally alien to God's word."
That about sums it up. Theocracy lite. But give these people a majority and
it will get much heavier.
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS ˇ Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
****************************************************************
USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
**************************************************************** |
|
